It has long been known to attach bait containers holding live bait such as minnows, leeches, etc. to the side of a boat while fishing. The containers are usually attached to the boat by means of a rope, chain, or cable attached at one end to the handle of the container and at the other end to some fixture, such as an oarlock, attached to the boat. Usually such containers include a number of holes sized to be small enough such that the bait cannot escape from the container. These holes allow water to flow through the container, thereby providing a fresh supply of oxygenated water to the bait at all times and preventing the bait from dying due to the water in the container from becoming stale.
There are many varieties of the aforementioned type of bait containers available. One such type includes inner and outer metal or plastic, nesting buckets. The inner bucket has a multiplicity of flow through holes and it rests within the outer bucket. The inner bucket contains a lid through which the bait inside can be reached by the fisherman. Typically the lid is spring biased to a closed position. The fisherman can remove the inner bucket from the outer bucket and place it in the water when fishing. The inner bucket of this type usually has the aforementioned multiplicity of holes disposed in the cylindrical side wall near the bottom. As such, it cannot normally retain enough water to keep the bait alive by itself. The outer bucket has no such holes and acts as a water retention device to keep the water in the inner bucket at a desired level so as to keep the bait alive when the bait container is removed from the water.
Another well known variety of the foregoing type of bait container is the "Flow Troll".RTM. trolling bucket manufactured by Frabill, Inc. of Allenton, Wis. This container has a roughly cylindrical configuration with a pair of flotation lobes disposed on opposite sides thereof. The upper half of the container has a multiplicity of holes on the "rear" of the container while directly opposite thereto on the front of the container is a door spring biased to a closed position that has a multiplicity of holes. The container also includes a weight attached to the bottom interior adjacent the rear side. The weight and the flotation lobes cause the container to float on its back or rear side, thereby allowing the fisherman access to the interior of the container and to the bait held therein since the container will be floating with the door facing upward. This floating container, unlike the aforementioned inner bucket which sinks below the surface of the water, can become warm even in cooler water however, since it floats substantially out of the water and is exposed to the sun as a result. Since water enters the container only through the rear, submerged holes, if the circulation of the water within the bucket is not sufficiently great, the water held therein may heat up slightly inside the bucket to the detriment of the quality of the bait held therein.
Both of the aforementioned varieties of bait containers include a handle attached to the container in some manner. Typically, a rope or line is attached at one end to the handle and at the other end to the boat in some manner. The containers are lowered into the water while the boat is anchored, drifting, or slowly trolling. One of the deficiencies of the foregoing varieties is that when the fisherman decides to move to another fishing spot, the bait container may be initially forgotten about. Consequently, the fisherman may begin to move the boat at a high rate of speed to a new fishing location, only to look behind him to find that the bait container is bouncing off the waves to the extreme detriment of his bait. In addition, the operation of each of the foregoing types of bait containers requires the use of two hands. One hand must be used to hold the container and another to open the door into the container to reach the bait.
It would be desirable to have a bait container support for commercially available bait containers that was readily attachable to a boat and that would support the container below or substantially below water level to assure a fresh supply of cool, oxygenated water to the bait while being capable of automatically lifting the bait out of the water when the boat was moving at a high rate of speed. It would further be desirable to have a bait container support that would facilitate the fisherman in accessing the live bait within the bait container by making the step of accessing the bait within the container possible with one hand.